IF York artist Malcolm Ludvigsen has an even bigger smile than usual at the second weekend of York Open Studios, the reason lies with the United States.

"A surprising thing happened last week," says the university mathematics professor and plein-air oil painter, who will be exhibiting at 34 Belle Vue Street, on Saturday from 10am to 6pm and Sunday, 11am to 5pm. "Like many artists these days, I rely increasingly on the internet; I have my own website, which produces quite a few sales, especially from aboard, and, more recently, I joined an internet gallery called Artfinder.

"Usually only a handful of people a day, sometime none at all, look at my Artfinder gallery, and it produces less than one sale a month. However, a few days ago things began to change and thousands of people started looking at my gallery. One day, last Wednesday I think, there were 8,300! And then the sales started, six in the last week."

Malcolm had no idea why this was occurring, until suddenly he received a copy of an American magazine called Outdoor Artist in the post. "It contained an article about my work entitled Sea Fever with lots of my paintings of the Yorkshire coast," he says. "It's a special issue for May-June called Secrets Of 5 Landscape Painters – $14.99, available from all good newsagents, at least in America – and I'm one of them.

"This came as a complete surprise to me as the publishers had said nothing about it, nor even asked my permission; not that I would have objected, of course."

York Press:

The Sea Fever feature on Malcolm Ludvigsen's plein-air paintings in the American magazine Outdoor Artist

This is the second occasion when "something like this" has happened to Malcolm. "A few years back, a French translation of my book for Cambridge University Press, General Relativity – A Geometric Approach, with a preface by Sir Roger Penrose, was published without my leave, and the first I knew about it was when a copy arrived in the post," he recalls. "Not that I objected that time either, but it did come as a (pleasant) surprise. Perhaps it's just the way publishers do things."

As prolific as ever, Malcolm has a plethora of Yorkshire galleries showing his work this spring, beginning with the Water Street Gallery spring exhibition in Todmorden, with Margaret Shields and Liz Salter, until May 28 and his on-going show at the West Park Hotel in Harrogate.

An exhibition of Malcolm's York and Yorkshire scenes will run at the Norman Rea Gallery, University of York, from the at the beginning of May; he will take part in the RA Inspired Summer Show at the Kunsthuis Gallery, Dutch House, Crayke, near York, from June 16 to August 8; and he has pictures on show at the According To McGee gallery, in Tower Street, York and the Art Café contemporary gallery, in Flowergate, Whitby.

Malcolm has a further reason to be smiling. "A strange thing happened in Scarborough. I was painting on the cliff top on a very windy day, with my easel lashed to the promenade railings, when a gust of wind wrenched my canvas from the easel and it went flying over the edge of the cliff, landing half-way down and impossible to reach," he says. "There was nothing I could do, so I just left it there and went home."

A newspaper article drew attention to Malcolm's loss, inspiring an intrepid reader to climb down the cliff and rescue the canvas. "He very kindly presented it back to me," he says. "In spite of being on the side of the cliff for more than a week, it was still in good condition: just a bit of rain damage, seagull muck, mud, sand and leaves, all of which added to the texture."

To cap it all, the painting even sold shortly afterwards.